2023年英语专业八级考试真题及答案解析

(1)New calls for Australia to introduce a sugar-sweetened beverages tax have sparked an outery from the food and beverage industry and provoked resistance from politicians. But why do health experts keep calling for a sugar-sweetened beverages(SSB)tax, and why are politicians and industry resisting it? (2)Sugar taxes vary in design around the world in 26 countries. In Mexico, a 10%tax on sugary drinks was introduced in 2014.When the tax starts in the UK in April, there will be two bands—one for sugar content above 5g per 100ml and a second, higher tax on drinks containing more than 8g of sugar per 100ml. (3)In a 2018 statement on nutrition the Australian Medical Association(AMA)urged the government to introduce an SSB tax. This is significant because AMA is generally conservative when it comes to health policy and often avoids controversial debates. But it now wants a sugar tax"as a matter of priority". (4)The health minister has made it clear the government will not support it, saying food labelling laws and voluntary codes of conduct to restrict food marketing to children are adequate. A Labor MP also stopped short of supporting a tax, saying other strategies are needed to promote a healthy lifestyle. The Greens, led by former doctor Richard Di Natale, support the tax and have previously proposed a 20%increase to the price of sugary drinks. (5)According to Prof. Tim Gill, from the Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise &Eating Disorders in Sydney, the strength of an SSB tax is that it targets an easily defined product.“It's easy to identify sugary drinks and their manufacturers, and you can tax them at their production,"he said.“There are a limited number of sugary drinks producers in Australia. A problem for governments collecting taxes can be how complicated it can be. If you were to try to tax every sugary food for example, that would be very complicated to do." (6)The government has previously used complexity as an argument against an SSB tax.“But now with the UK jumping on the bandwagon, which has a similar consumption culture to ours but with a larger population and more producers, that complexity argument doesn't hold weight anymore,"Gill said. (7)Bureau of Statistics data shows Australia is one of the 10 highest soft drink-consuming countries per capita. The World Health Organisation recommends adults consume no more than six teaspoons of sugar per day, but the average Australian consumes more than double that. A 330ml bottle of Coke contains nine teaspoons of sugar. (8)A study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found sales of soft drinks in Melbourne's Alfred hospital dropped 27.6%during a 17-week trial when the price of sugary drinks was increased by 20%.Bottled water sales increased by almost the same amount. (9)An analysis of sugary-drink purchases in Mexico conducted two years after the tax was introduced found a 5.5%drop in the first year, followed by a9.7%decline in the second. While two years is not enough to determine the long-term impact on health, the study found:“These reductions in consumption could have positive impacts on health outcomes and reductions in healthcare expenses." (10)Sugar-sweetened drinks and sugar generally have been associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay and bone density problems. The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association says obesity is the leading cause of preventable death or illess in Australia—above smoking. But it will take longer term analysis to see clear evidence of any impact of a tax on obesity levels. (11)Lobby groups from the food and beverage industry are powerful. The Australian Beverages Council, the industry's lobby group, has been fighting against a tax for years. It says there is no evidence a tax will do anything to reduce obesity, and it will cost jobs, which is a frightening message for politicians. The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores(AACS)described the introduction of an SSB tax in the UK as“lazy,” “flawed,”“discriminatory”and“irrational”.It has ramped up its campaign to prevent such a tax in Australia. (12)Would introducing a sugar tax make Australia a nanny-state?It depends on whether you believe the food and beverage industry has too much power. Health experts argue that through advertising, product placement and political influence, the food and beverage industry has an unfair and non-transparent influence over consumer purchasing habits, and that children especially are sometimes powerless to recognise or resist it. They say an SSB tax would hold the industry to account. Others argue people need to take personal responsibility. (13)A Deakin University study used economic modelling to show the increase in annual spending on sugar-sweetened drinks under a 20%tax would average $30 a person, but those in the lowest socioeconomic groups would pay $5 a year more than those in the wealthiest groups. (14)Researchers concluded this was a modest price to pay given the benefits—and that Australia's lowest socioeconomic group would receive the greatest health benefits. Health experts and advocacy groups say governments could reduce the financial burden on disadvantaged people by using revenue from a tax to fund health initiatives.

(1)I'd been living in Los Angeles just under a year when, in the spring of 1983, I answered an ad in the Hollywood Reporter for a receptionist and got the job. The pay wasn't much, but the work was in“the Business"—an apt Los Angeles euphemism for the entertainment industry. The location was within bicycling distance of my home, and they only wanted someone to work mornings. I'd get off by I p.m., which I thought would leave me plenty of time to do my own writing. I was wrong about that. The place was so frantic I'd come out wired and need the rest of the day to simply calm down. When, after about two weeks, I realized my afternoons were being spent in activities equivalent to running around the block twenty or thirty times, I asked to be put on full-time. Since I wasn't getting anything else, why not, I figured, jump in for the total experience. (2)The(still thriving)company I found myself a part of possessed the unlikely name of Breakdown Services, Ltd. During the six months I worked there, I learned to savor all of that phrase's more cynical reverberations, but in terms of the job it dealt with the dismantling or breakdown of television and film scripts. Scripts gathered from producers or studios would be regurgitated ( 回 流 )by Breakdown in the form of plot summaries, character descriptions, number of scenes per character, and the number of dialogue lines each speaks. These compilations were then xeroxed and distributed to hundreds of subscribing actors'agents who proceeded to submit their clients for likely parts. It was a process, as I was to discover by way of angry phone calls when“breakdowns”arrived late or not at all, that the agents regarded with a reverence others might reserve for morning prayer. (3)Breakdown Services, Ltd.was the brainchild of a young man named Gary Marsh. Gary was twenty- eight when I met him, but he'd founded Breakdown when he was eighteen and was considered something of an entrepreneurial prodigy. His mother was an agent and he'd observed the piles of scripts she and her agent pals had to plow through in order to match a given role with the talent they represented. He'd also observed how much they hated the reading part of their jobs and had cleverly devised breakdowns as a way of extracting the material they needed. (4)By the time I arrived, five full-time breakdown writers worked in a desk-lined back room overlooking a parking lot. I've heard the current crew has now advanced to computers, but when I was there typewriters were the norm. When they weren't typing, the writers would curl up on the office's worn stuffed couch and, with a script propped against one arm, fill legal-sized yellow pads with dialogue line numbers and comments which they'd then type up. It could be a complex job. For example, the breakdown for a film originally called Teenage Gambler lists over forty characters, ranging from the teenaged gambling leader to five waiters who sing"Happy Birthday"at a surprise party. (5)Perhaps because of the patience involved in this sort of extraction, women seemed to dominate the ranks of the break-downers(during my tenure the ratio was four to one).Although Gary knew I'd done a bit of writing, I was relegated to the front office and never received an invitation to try my hand at breakdowns. It wasn't something I really wanted to do. For one thing, the writers were a youthful bunch. The back room senior was in her early thirties, but none of the others had hit twenty-five. And I think Gary rightly surmised I'd be too openly cynical for the job or try to embellish too much. Breakdowns were produced anonymously and offered no artistic evaluations of the scripts. The writers might talk among themselves about a piece they felt was particularly good or bad, but such editorializing was not allowed to make its way into the final product. That this restriction was frustrating is indicated by the fact that two of the writers began venting opinions as moonlighting theater critics for small local papers. (6)For Gary, the most problematical aspect of the breakdown business was its limited market. This had nothing to do with his operating methodology; he did what he could to exploit the possibilities. Each weekday a hardy crew made predawn deliveries of breakdowns to agents'homes or offices, while a post-dawn quartet of pager-equipped Breakdown field workers haunted the big studios ready to pounce on an available script. For these studio prowlers speed was of the essence, not only because Hollywood tends to be crisis-prone and wants everything done quickly, but because a rival, spawned by the success of Breakdown Services, Ltd.and infuriatingly named BreakThrough Productions, Ltd., was also on the hunt. (7)Breakdown Services unquestionably dominated the field, but the field itself had immutable perimeters. Breakdown's subscribers had to be accredited agents, though there were some exceptions to this rule. For instance, specialized media organizations, such as the competitive, vulture-like companies that insured movie productions, could keep tabs on the industry by subscribing to the weekly Breakdown summaries. But the whole Breakdown operation was hard to monitor. When I was there, a Breakdown subscription was expensive, something like $500 a year. And though breakdowns were copyrighted and unauthorized reproduction was clearly prohibited, xerox machines are notoriously bad at picking up such distinctions and among the larger agencies breakdowns were undoubtedly duplicated and passed around. (8)Gary's response to these built-in economic dilemmas was to diversify. A separate department for commercials, for example, appeared as part of the Breakdown menu. Although Breakdown staffers were supposed to refrain from giving tips to potential talent, I did once tell a friend—who hoped to finance the college educations of her five-year-old identical twins by getting them on a commercial—that a juice company had put out a call for identical twin girls. Their agent submitted them, but they didn't get the job. The nightly Breakdown delivery system expanded to an all-day messenger service. Gary also made available an assortment of directories and mailing labels listing casting directors, talent agents, and literary agents in Los Angeles and New York. The current Breakdown brochure adds yet another Breakdown amenity; for fifteen dollars you can receive an“actors'relaxation”cassette tape“designed to maximize your abilities and stimulate your creative senses”.

(1)It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins—with all which this implies of dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. That was all hard, cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had aspects to rest the tired eyes and refresh that something in one's nature which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. (2)I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me; or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed lithographs( 平 版 印 刷 画 ) , and bright-colored tidies and lamp- mats, and Windsor chairs, and varnished whatnots(陈设架), with sea-shells and books and china vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken away. The delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it had been spoken. (3)“All her work,"he said, caressingly;“she did it all herself—every bit,”and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it to suit him. Then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand, and said:“She always does that. You can't tell just what it lacks, but it does lack something until you've done that—you can see it yourself after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of it. It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her fix allthese things so much that I can do them all just her way, though I don't know the law of any of them. But she knows the law. She knows the why and the how both; but I don't know the why; I only know the how." (4)He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels—towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. So my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words:“All her work; she did it all herself—every bit. Nothing here that hasn't felt the touch of her hand. Now you would think—But I mustn't talk so much.” (5)By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place, where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right track, being eager to gratify him. I failed several times, as I could see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last I knew I must be looking straight at the thing—knew it from the pleasure issuing in invisible waves from him. He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his hands together, and cried out:“That's it!You've found it. I knew you would. It's her picture." (6)I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and did find there what I had not yet noticed—a picture case. It contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it seemed to me, that I had ever seen. The man drank the admiration from my face, and was fully satisfied. (7)“Nineteen her last birthday,"he said, as he put the picture back;“and that was the day we were married. When you see her—ah, just wait till you see her!" (8)“Where is she?When will she be in?” (9)“Oh, she's away now. She's gone to see her people. They live forty or fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today." (10)“When do you expect her back?” (11)“This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening—about nine o'clock, likely.” (12)I felt a sharp sense of disappointment. (13)“I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then,”I said, regretfully. (14)“Gone?No—why should you go?Don't go. She'll be disappointed.” (15)She would be disappointed—that beautiful creature!If she had said the words herself, they could hardly have blessed me more. I was feeling a deep, strong longing to see her—a longing so supplicating, so insistent, that it made me afraid. I said to myself:“I will go straight away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake." (16)“You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us—people who know things, and can talk— people like you. She delights in it; for she knows—oh, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like a bird—and the books she reads, why, you would be astonished. Don't go; it's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed." (17)I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my thinkings and strugglings. He left me, but I didn't know. Presently he was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he held it open before me and said:“There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, and you wouldn't.”